Destroyer - Master's Challenge Part 20

The Dutchman was sweating. The pleasure of the snake's movements was exquisite, better than any woman. Its dry scales carried the scent of death on them. With his tongue, the Dutchman licked the animal's belly. Moaning, he descended into the pit, the viper wound around his waist. He lay there for some time, surrounded by the staring eyes and open mouths of the dead men, while the snakes curled around him like smoke.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Mildred Pensoitte smiled when Smith walked into her office in midafternoon.

"How is my resident genius now that he's back in residence?" she asked.

"I'm fine. I just had a very unusual call."

"Oh?" she said.

"Some man called for a Robin Feldmar. He said he wanted to give Earth Goodness a large donation, but he'd only give it to Robin Feldmar and only personally."

"Oh. That's odd." Her brow furrowed. "Did he say anything else?"

"He said that Robin Feldmar would know how to use the money right to get rid of imperialists." Smith said. "He said he knew her well."

"Did he give a name?" she asked.

"No. He said he'd call back." Smith shrugged. "Do you know a Robin Feldmar? I can't find a record on her anywhere."

Dr. Pensoitte was looking out the window as if Smith were not even in her office. Then she turned back to him with a slow, growing smile.

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"Sure, Harry, Of course I do. She was one of my college professors. The first one who got me involved with the environment."

"And she's with Earth Goodness, Inc.?" Smith asked.

"She helped me found it in the early days," Mildred said.

"Okay," Smith said. "Is she around?" He tried a smile and realized how rarely it was that he smiled because his face felt sore as he attempted it. "We can't afford to go turning down large contributions."

"As luck would have it, she's in town," Mildred said. "We're having dinner tonight."

"Good."

"So when that man calls back, get his name and number and tell him that we'll have Birdie call him."

Smith nodded.

"What did he sound like?" Mildred asked.

"What do you mean?" asked Smith in return.

"You think he might have been a crank? Birdie gets bothered a lot by cranks."

"He sounded very substantial," Smith said.

"Good, Harry. 1 like substantial," she said. "As I said, Birdie gets bothered a lot. She even gets death threats."

"From whom?" Smith asked.

Mildred shrugged. "Cranks, 1 guess. Because she's so active in so many organizations to make America live up to its promise."

Smith thought of the young students he had seen that day in Minnesota, set up by Robin Feldmar to use as cannon fodder, and he wished he could tell Dr. Pensoitte that her friend was a faker and a fraud. But he could not do that. Not yet. Not unless he wanted to admit also that the so-called telephone message and the anonymous giver were also just lies-just to find out where Robin Feldmar could be located.

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"Substantial," she said.

"What?" Smith asked.

"We were just talking about substantial. You know, Harry, that's what you are."

"It's what I try to be," he said. He smiled again and found it easier this time. Maybe it just took practice.

"That's why I need you," she said. "Earth Goodness needs you. You have a future here with us."

"You think so?"

"I know so. We're just starting. We're going to be one of the biggest groups in international affairs in just a few more years, and we need management to do that. We need you, Harry. Earth Goodness needs you. I need you. The world needs you."

"That's very flattering," he said.

"And very true. You said you were bored. I can promise that you'll never be bored around here," she said.

"I can already see that."

She smiled at him. Her eyes were very dark. "I'll never let you be bored."

"I hope not."

"1 suspect you'll be working late tonight? As usual?" she asked and Smith nodded.

"Well, I'm going to go home. When you finish up, why don't you come over? You can meet Robin Feldmar. And if you've got that unknown benefactor's name and number, Birdie can call him right away."

Before she left, she gave Smith the address of her apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Smith sat alone in his darkened office, a circle of light from a gooseneck lamp on his desk the only illumination for a hundred feet in each direction. Everyone else had gone. It had been his experience that the more anarchist and anti-establishment an organization's goals were, the 185.

more likely its office staff would be clock-punchers. At 4:30 P.M., the workers had fled like a toilet being flushed.

He was on the telephone with the computers at Folcroft. n.o.body had been killed or seriously injured at Du Lac college that day, and news reports said that fast action by the college president had succeeded in averting a major tragedy.

Smith shook his head. The real major tragedy was that so many young people in college were having their heads filled with slogans, instead of learning to think for themselves.

The computer had received no messages from the a.s.sa.s.sins' network about the four men who had died in St. Martin's. Smith thought for a moment about the men he had killed. The killing had shaken him, and he wished again that Remo and Chiun were available. Did Remo suffer like that when there was a life to be taken? Or did he just go ahead and do his job anyway?

Smith put those thoughts out of his mind and concentrated on what he had learned from the men.

One of them would have been able to monitor Secret Service security messages. That would explain why the Secret Service had not moved to protect the president when Smith had put word of the a.s.sa.s.sination attempt into their computers.

But that still didn't mean it was safe for the president to return home. Not yet, because even if they were totally on the job, the Secret Service might not be able to protect him from a dedicated a.s.sa.s.sination team. His return would still have to wait for Smith's dismantling of the a.s.sa.s.sination crew.

The dead young men's orders had come from Robin Feldmar. And Robin Feldmar had been close with Mildred Pensoitte. And Feldmar managed a computer network at Du Lac College. And she had a history of involvement 186.

with radical groups. And her nickname was Birdie, and the a.s.sa.s.sin leader's initial was "B."

The more he thought of it, the more sure he was that Robin Feldmar had taken over Earth Goodness, without Mildred Pensoitte's knowledge, and used it as a base for her plot to kill the president.

He was cleaning off his desk when the telephone rang.

Mildred Pensoitte's voice crackled with fear. "Oh, Harry, I'm so glad I caught you."

"What's the matter?"

"Please come over here. There's been a terrible tragedy."

"What happened? Are you all right?"

"I'm all right. But Birdie . . . poor Birdie is dead."

Smith met Mildred in the lobby of one of New York City's largest hotels, which offered getaway weekends at special rates for people and roaches. She took his arm and led him to the elevators, but the elevator car was crowded, and she said nothing until she unlocked the door to a room on the eighth floor and stepped aside so he could enter.

Robin Feldmar had been a tall, attractive woman in her late forties. But now, with her throat cut from one ear to another in a grim, ghastly echo of a smile, she was just a tall, bloodied corpse, lying on the floor of her room near the foot of a bed.

"What happened?" Smith asked.

"I got here to pick her up and bring her to my place for dinner," Mildred said. "She didn't answer the phone, so I thought she was in the shower, and I came up. The door was open a crack, and when I pushed it open, I saw her body. She was dead. Oh, Harry." She collapsed against Smith, who held her against his chest, patting the back of her head gently, uncomfortably aware of her bosom heaving against his chest. It was an unusual feeling, holding 187.

and comforting a woman. He could not ever remember having held Irma that way.

Smith looked past Mildred at the room. All the drawers were still closed, and clothing hung neatly in an open closet. There was no indication that the room had been ransacked.

"Did you call me from here?" he asked.

"No. I ran first," she said. "Then 1 thought better and called you from the lobby."

"Did you touch anything?" he said.

She looked confused, and tears coursed down her face. She shook her head. "Just the door, I guess. And the key."

"Be sure," he said. "Did you use the bathroom? Did you go in there to throw up?"

"No. No." She started to turn away from Smith, saw the body on the floor again, and turned back to him sobbing. She threw her arms over his shoulders and around his neck.

"I'm sorry. I guess I'm just no good at this."

"Here's what I want you to do," Smith said. "Dry your eyes, go downstairs, walk a few blocks away, and then take a cab home. I'll meet you there in a little while."

"What are you going to do?"

"I want to make sure that you haven't dropped anything here or left anything. Then I'll follow you."

"We're not going to call the police?" she said.

"Feldmar's dead," Smith said. "Why should you be involved? It'd only hurt the organization."

She looked at him silently, then nodded. "I guess you're right."

"I know I'm right. Go ahead. I'll meet you at your apartment."

She ran quickly from the room, and the door swung shut behind her. Smith stood with his back to the entrance door 188.

and visualized what a woman might do if she came into a room and saw her friend dead on the floor, a murder victim.

He quickly stepped forward to the body and knelt alongside it. Almost without thought, his hand reached out to the wooden base of the bed to steady himself. With his handkerchief, he carefully wiped the wooden base clean of fingerprints.

Kneeling there, he looked at the body. There was a puncture wound under the left ear and then a slow jagged rip across the throat to under the right ear. He had seen that kind of wound before. It was administered by someone who came from behind the victim, threw an arm around her, and then with his right hand drove the knife into her throat and slashed from left to right. The wound was jagged, the flesh almost serrated. It had been a dull knife, and the killer had had to saw his way around Robin Feldmar's throat. It had taken a long time, and it demonstrated a lot of hate or anger, he thought.

The room key was back on the dresser where Mildred had put it, and he wiped the plastic tag free of prints. He walked back to the door, wiping his handkerchief along the edge of the dresser where Mildred might have rested a hand if she had stumbled or paused for a moment in her panic. He cleaned the doork.n.o.b, then with his handkerchief opened the door and listened for sound in the hallway. There was none, so he stepped into the hallway. The heavy door swung shut behind him and clicked. He wiped the doork.n.o.b, put his handkerchief back in his pocket, and walked quickly away down the hall.

He went out a side door of the hotel and walked for two blocks before hailing a cab to Mildred Pensoitte's apartment.

While he was riding the thirty blocks uptown, he wondered who would have wanted to kill Robin Feldmar. It would have been an easy problem if he had been one of 189.

her disciples: he could have believed that she was killed by the big, repressive, all-powerful government who wanted to silence her voice. But more than anyone else in America, Smith knew that was wrong, because he was the person inside the government who authorized the killing of people because they represented a danger to that government.

The killer was someone else.

But who?

"But who would have wanted to kill her?" he asked Mildred at her apartment. She had regained her composure somewhat and had changed into a long flowing robe. They sat across a pot of coffee in her living room. Smith had declined her offer of something to eat.

"I guess I'd better tell you everything," Mildred said.

"I think so."

Mildred walked to a sideboard, poured herself a small gla.s.s of cream sherry, and when she came back, sat on the sofa alongside Smith. She sipped her drink and put it on the table in front of them.